Today’s column on UC Riverside freshman track athlete Briana Feldhaus discussed the academic hurdles she had to overcome to get to college, including the particularly large one thrown up by the NCAA clearing house, which wouldn’t declare her eligible until faced with mountains of paperwork and documentation to support her appeal.

But how is she managing now that she’s in college, while dealing with dyslexia and ADHD, with which she was diagnosed in grade school?

She’s refreshingly candid about it.

“Things don’t come as easy to me as they do for everybody else,” she said. “It takes more time for me to learn math equations and memorize them than it does other people. It’s hard for me to focus … there are days I just cannot focus. There’s no way around it. But I’ve gotten a lot better. In middle school I was on Ritalin and then one day it was like, ‘I’m not taking any more of it.’ I was miserable. So I had to teach myself how to focus, or at least to look like I’m focusing, to mellow myself out.”

She said she goes over her work several times, because of the tendency to switch letters or numbers (the latter, she said, a particular problem in math classes and one reason she says she’d be happy if she never saw another math class).

Now, she says, “I’m pretty good at making myself focus. I have bad days. I’m not going to lie. There’s days I’m just bouncing off the wall, or my head’s in the clouds. Luckily I’m in those classes with other athletes, so if I’m missing notes I just say, ‘Hey, can you give me the notes from class today?’

“I’ll sit in class and it’s like the TV channel changes in my head, and then I’ll look on the board and it’s a whole other slide.”

Feldhaus said she tries to take full notes, and finds it easier when she can use her laptop and type the notes in rather than trying to write them longhand.

“If I’m writing notes it doesn’t work for me because my handwriting is sloppy and I write too fast and then I spell everything wrong,” she said. “It’s real easy for me to type, and if I spell something wrong all I have to do is use my spell-check. I can type faster than I can write, and I can type without looking at my computer. That’s how it helps me focus more. I can look at the teacher and listen to him, and I can also see the notes on the board and make sure I’m writing all those down, too.”

Do instructors encourage use of the laptop?

“Some do, some don’t,” she said. “For discussions they don’t really like us to use the laptop because they think we’re on the Internet and stuff like that. But for big lectures they don’t seem to have a problem with it.

“Only one time, in my Ethnic Studies class, my professor told everybody that they have to put their computers away. But I actually have an accommodation (because of her learning disability) which allows me to have my computer at all times. So I was allowed to keep my computer out.”

She grinned.

“Everybody was mad at me for that.”

Other accommodations made for her condition: She can use a voice recorder during lectures, and she can take tests and exams in a smaller room and have more time to complete them.

Does she know of other students with a similar situation?

“Not really,” she said. “I’m sure a lot of people have ADD and ADHD and all that stuff, but I don’t notice. They don’t seem to have a problem with it. Nobody here, really. Everybody here’s pretty smart, and they can handle their own. I don’t really run into too many people with learning disabilities like me.”

But while she acknowledges feeling a little intimidated early on, she recognizes there’s too much on the line, and too many people who fought for her eligibility, to turn back now.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, college, what am I going to do here?’ ” she said. “But I was determined to make sure I made it work. This isn’t just about me. It’s about mom, my grandma, my whole family … I mean, I’m not the only one who’s put a lot on the line for me to be out here, or sacrificed a lot.

“My mom (Maria), she sacrifices a lot for me all the time. She’s always making sure I’m doing everything right. It’s pressure but at the same time it’s motivating. Having it not just be for me makes me work harder, because I like making my mom proud. I like making my family proud … I know I could never really disappoint my mother, but at the same time she sacrificed so much for me, all the time. It’s always been just me and her, and I’m trying to do this for her and me.

“She taught me to never give up because she never gave up.”

* * *

Incidentally, for purposes of clarification, on the UCR track roster she is listed as Briana Kennedy-Feldhaus, but in meet results she’s known as Briana Feldhaus.

The reason: Kennedy is the surname of her father, who didn’t stick around to participate in his daughter’s life. “I don’t know where he is,” Briana said, before describing him with a colorful if mildly unprintable term.

But her birth certificate and social security card say “Kennedy-Feldhaus,” so for the purposes of the legal documents that got her admitted to UCR and got her her scholarship money, that was the name she had to use.

She makes clear, though, that she’ll always have her mother’s back, and vice versa.

“My mom is an amazing person,” she said. “We’ve been through a lot, financially and just in life. At the end of the day, we can be in the worst situation ever, but we have each other.”

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